The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing

Hilal Doğanay Katı; Adem Avcı; Gürkan Aydemir

doi:10.38088/jise.1906157

The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing

Abstract

Most data-driven bearing remaining useful life (RUL) estimation studies assume constant rotational speed, which does not reflect real industrial operating conditions. In applications such as electric vehicle drivetrains, bearings operate under continuously varying speed profiles that modulate vibration signal characteristics and obscure degradation signatures, making RUL estimation significantly more challenging. This study presents an experimental investigation of the effect of speed non-stationarity on deep learning-based bearing RUL estimation. Two run-to-failure accelerated life tests were conducted on SKF 6203-2RSH/C3 deep groove ball bearings: one under a constant rotational speed and one under a time-varying speed profile derived from the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP). Average speed and radial loading were kept identical across both experiments to isolate the effect of speed variability. A 1D residual convolutional neural network (CNN), a gated recurrent unit (GRU) network and an attention-augmented bidirectional gated recurrent unit network (Att-BiGRU) were evaluated under four training-test scenarios covering both within-condition and cross-condition configurations. Within-condition results show that all models can learn meaningful degradation patterns even under non-stationary conditions when training and test data are matched, yielding RMSE values of 12.93, 16.58 and 12.37 cycles for the CNN, GRU and Att-BiGRU respectively under the WLTP regime. These results demonstrate that variable speed operation represents the general case for industrial bearing prognostics and that dedicated strategies at the feature extraction, model architecture, and training levels are required to develop reliable RUL estimators for real-world applications.

Keywords

Supporting Institution

This study was partially supported by the Bursa Technical University Scientific Research Projects Fund (BTÜ-BAP) under Project No.\ 241N012, and by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) under the 1002 Short-Term R\&D Funding Programme, Project No.\ 224M357.

Project Number

241N012

Ethical Statement

study does not require ethics committee permission or any special permission.

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Industrial Electronics

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Hilal Doğanay Katı
0000-0002-2807-8040
Türkiye

Adem Avcı ^*
0000-0002-1529-8765
Türkiye

Gürkan Aydemir
0000-0001-9213-576X
Türkiye

Publication Date

August 17, 2026

Submission Date

March 9, 2026

Acceptance Date

April 2, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 10 Number: 2

DOI

https://doi.org/10.38088/jise.1906157

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA96YM69LU

Cite

RIS / Bibtex

APA

Doğanay Katı, H., Avcı, A., & Aydemir, G. (2026). The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing. Journal of Innovative Science and Engineering, 10(2), 386-406. https://doi.org/10.38088/jise.1906157

AMA

1.Doğanay Katı H, Avcı A, Aydemir G. The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing. JISE. 2026;10(2):386-406. doi:10.38088/jise.1906157

Chicago

Doğanay Katı, Hilal, Adem Avcı, and Gürkan Aydemir. 2026. “The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing”. Journal of Innovative Science and Engineering 10 (2): 386-406. https://doi.org/10.38088/jise.1906157.

EndNote

Doğanay Katı H, Avcı A, Aydemir G (August 1, 2026) The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing. Journal of Innovative Science and Engineering 10 2 386–406.

IEEE

[1]H. Doğanay Katı, A. Avcı, and G. Aydemir, “The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing”, JISE, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 386–406, Aug. 2026, doi: 10.38088/jise.1906157.

ISNAD

Doğanay Katı, Hilal - Avcı, Adem - Aydemir, Gürkan. “The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing”. Journal of Innovative Science and Engineering 10/2 (August 1, 2026): 386-406. https://doi.org/10.38088/jise.1906157.

JAMA

1.Doğanay Katı H, Avcı A, Aydemir G. The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing. JISE. 2026;10:386–406.

MLA

Doğanay Katı, Hilal, et al. “The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing”. Journal of Innovative Science and Engineering, vol. 10, no. 2, Aug. 2026, pp. 386-0, doi:10.38088/jise.1906157.

Vancouver

1.Hilal Doğanay Katı, Adem Avcı, Gürkan Aydemir. The Impact of Varying Speed on Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Rolling Element Bearing. JISE. 2026 Aug. 1;10(2):386-40. doi:10.38088/jise.1906157